Conventionally, in a medical setting, various modalities such as an ultrasonic diagnosis apparatus, an X-ray CT apparatus, and an MRI apparatus, have been used. After viewing an image taken by those modalities, doctors produce a report. In producing the report, a medical image that has been acquired in advance is often pasted.
However, conventionally, while the produced report can be printed by a printer or the like, a background of an ultrasonic image or the like is blotted out with black in many cases. Therefore, a problem is that the cost of using ink increases as the produced report is printed. One solution to the problem is a monochrome inversion function.
The monochrome inversion function is to invert a monochrome level of the image pasted in the report, a black image is converted into a white image, and the white image is converted into the black image. However, if all an area of the image is simply subjected to a monochrome inversion process, for example, a color image of the ultrasonic image is inverted too. The inversion of the color image may pose a problem.
In the case of the ultrasonic image, for example, an image of blood flow is displayed as a color image, a flow of blood in a direction away from an ultrasonic probe is displayed in blue hue, and a flow of blood in a direction toward the ultrasonic probe is displayed in red hue. Accordingly, if the monochrome inversion is simply carried out, the color image is inverted too, the blue image is converted into red image, and the red image is converted into blue image. As a result, the colors indicating the blood flows become inverted, disrupting diagnosis.